Cycling, trains, walking. This is the place to talk about how good or bad cycle routes are, mention great train journeys, talk about car sharing schemes or husky travel. Anything in fact that is about transport that is a little alternative.

Not too well at present,so too much time to think and spout nonsense..the bit about travelling cheap had me thinking..
It used to that you'd see loads of people hitching (30 years ago if you drove for 4 or 5 hours you'd always see someone).From 14 or 15,I hitched every where,even when I got a motorbike,as it was often broke,or I was.
With the advent of bloody cameras everywhere,internet/organization,etc.etc. it cant be beyond the wit of some groupof young people to make it popular again.I accept that some groups of people will feel vulnerable,but there must be some way round that.
So many vehicles travelling 3/4 empty. And to be honest,it's not an extension of your property just a way of getting from one place to another.Plus it's quite a nice non me,me,me-thing to do.

It sounds so much like a nice idea, but as we are fed the horrors of our society on daily basis, I must admit, I would never hitchhike or take anybody in my car... I am way to wary of the humans I do not know, and unfortunately you just need one of those psychos to be on your path and your life could end in one of the worse possible way. This is one risk I am not prepared to take.

We still get the occasional hiker up here - well they're usually walkers who are either knackered or realised they've not given themselves enough time to walk to Scrabster for their planned Orkney trip.

I don't pick them up if I'm alone in the car - which of course emphasises oj's point - but I just don't feel safe even though most of them are not much more than kids. But I'll happily pick a single hiker even if I've only got my mother with me

The last one I picked up was indeed on his way to Scrabster, nice American lad who was taking a few months to see Europe before starting at Harvard. We dropped him off and carried on to Wick to do our shopping. When we loaded the car up afterwards I found a knife in the footwell where he'd been sitting. It gave me a bit of a turn until I realised it was just a blunt butter knife and the only damage done would be that he couldn't butter his bread on the rest of his holiday.

Maggie

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have. Marge Piercy

I'm sure thats the natural reaction from 90% of the poulation though I think you are statistically more likely to be murdered by your partner (infinitely more likely in my case).An old friend whose a courier driver uses a website where he says where he is,and would be customers can offer him work,given that loads of people have iphones these days why couldn't some bright young thing come up with something similar,on a voulantary basis(People could have some kind of vetting?..I dunno).If people can set up adhoc independant,free,talking groups,why not the same for travel? Maybe start off with local groups?
So much that would once have seemed like a good idea,but not practical,is now taken for granted(eg Wikipeadia).
And the bottom line is all those half empty cars driving around,and all those skint people who want to go somewhere.

I stopped for a couple of university students a few years ago who were trying to hitch hike to the Highlands and back over a bank holiday weekend. I only took them about 5 miles and dropped them off south of Perth.

Later that day with my wife and daughter in the car we were heading north of Perth and there they were by the side of the road so I picked them up again and took them about another 5 miles.

It was only then we thought about murdering them and dismembering their bodies.

I agree OJ & dont know what the answer is! (sorry about exclamation mark) I would always give someone a lift if I was with someone but, reluctant if alone. There must be some way of getting a network going to offer / request lifts. Of course, lorries used to be allowed to give lifts but that is now not allowed. Its a bit like kids playing in the street (now you will be confused ) the more that do it, the safer it is. Its all gone out of fashion and the media attention about the negative sides make us scared to take the risk. But with all the techno-communication I hope hitching will become acceptable and safe again.
I even had a young friend of my son refuse a lift home in the rain as his mum said not to take lifts from "strangers"

There are a few carshare websites out there already, oj, so don't approach Dragons Den just yet

Can't remember their names but I signed up with a couple, I thought it might be quite useful when travelling down to Manchester as I was often on my own and, frankly, could have done with a hand with the petrol costs. I don't know whether there are too few members up this end, we are very car dependent up here, but I never had a single taker.

Maggie

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have. Marge Piercy

Statistically, you're much less likely to be murdered by a hitcher than struck by lightning. You want to avoid people who might kill you? First, get out of your car - traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of death and injury. Then cut all ties with your family, and never ever get romantically involved: family and partners are by far the most likely people to kill or injure you deliberately. Next most likely is random people you meet in the street, so to really be on the safe side, either go and live in a cave as far away from other people as possible, or kill everyone you see before they have a chance to kill you.

Or you could accept that life is not entirely risk-free and that it's only by taking chances on crazy, dangerous things like family and love (or even hitch-hikers) that you can have any chance at happiness at all. Oh, and remember that Hollywood movies are not a reliable guide to the risks. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life terrified of the people around you?

I once got a lift all the way from Edinburgh to Glencoe with Muriel Gray off the telly... That was a laugh, let me tell you. ;)

Back in the sixties and seventies, there were queues of hitchhikers at the start of the M1, People were hitching everywhere. Whether for holidays or work I would hitch, for a year I even commuted from Liverpool to London each weekend. It was as easy and as quick (in those days) as catching a train. I remember one weekend before xmas, I did Liverpool to London in 2.5hours, door to door, changing lifts once outside Cannock - both drivers doing 120mph all the way.

gregorach wrote:.......................... Do you really want to spend the rest of your life terrified of the people around you?
;)

Isn't this what we have been sold, that under Thatcher suddenly there was no society, the press played on everyones fears, you could no longer trust anyone. This to me was no accident but a concious attempt to break up communities and turn people into isolated, fearful individuals. So much easier to control.

Of course, Cameron's Big Society is not a return to real communities standing up for themselves, just a pretty face to the same old policies of cutting services and benefits to ordinary people, swelling the ranks of the underclass that will have no alternative but to turn to crime to survive.

Our Conservative council, as part of the Big Society wants to hand control of the allotments over to individual allotment sites but at treble the rent !!!!

Also clearly a certain section of people don't have to worry about hitching, Rolls Royce sales are up 170% on last year.

I wouldn't mind picking up a hitchhiker, I occasionally see them on the A10 but I'm never really going much further than the recycling place. I'd have to squash them in with all the bags of bramble clippings and bore them with my questionable taste in music. I think the risk would be all theirs . I shall keep an eye out for someone who looks like they wouldn't mind a bit of greenery and punk burlesque.

When I was at school my mum used to sometimes drive me and my brother there in the mornings. She wasn't very efficient at the school run (and Dan & I were rubbish,) so every morning we were 20 minutes late and my mother would panic and flood the engine, immobilising the car until it unflooded. Once this happened somewhere deserted and my mother flagged a man down, stuffed my brother in his car, and told him to drop Dan off at school. It was actually a neighbour who my mother knew very well, but Dan didn't know him from Adam and didn't realise she did, so spent the whole journey clutching his backpack and expecting to be murdered or abducted. I think we started walking after that, so it ended up as a win-win for our health and the environment .

I hitchhiked around Europe for 3 months =). My friend Erii continued doing it for more than a year =). I do it occasionally in Sweden when I'm tired of waiting for the bus. There are also good carpool sites. I pick up hitchhikers myself everytime I have space in the car.